PENNINGTON, John (b.1419), of Muncaster, Cumb.

Heir to one of the principal gentry inheritances in the north-west, Pennington had a brief but active career. On 31 Oct. 1440 he joined his maternal uncle, John Tunstall*, in offering heavy security for the appearance of his first cousin, Thomas Haryngton II*, before the King. Here he is described as ‘of Ravenglass’ near Muncaster, perhaps by virtue of property settled upon him by his father on his marriage to the daughter of another Cumberland knight. Soon after, he departed for France, continuing his family’s well-established military tradition. On 26 May 1441 he mustered in the retinue of Richard, duke of York, lieutenant-general of France, and sailed a month later. CCR, 1435-41, p. 449; E101/53/33, m. 6. In the following November he was named as captain of Pont Audemer ‘soubz le gouvernement’ of John, Lord Talbot, (soon to be earl of Shrewsbury), but not long afterwards he seems to have fallen into French hands. He is noted as a prisoner in a manuscript of September 1442, and this no doubt explains his replacement as captain by Edmund Mulsho*. Archives Nationales, Paris, Série K67/1/7; 12/81; A. Marshall, ‘English War Captains in Eng. and Normandy’ (Univ. of Wales M.A. thesis, 1975), 264. His captivity was over by May 1446 when he was serving in the garrison of Calais under Humphrey Stafford, duke of Buckingham, and he seems to have remained there until the following 12 Apr. If so, he was not only elected for Cumberland in absentia to the Parliament which met at Bury St. Edmunds on 10 Feb. 1447 but also missed the entire assembly. Perhaps he was elected on 24 Jan. in expectation of an imminent return that did not occur. Another possibility is that the contentious nature of the assembly’s business, easily anticipated in advance, deterred candidature and he was elected because rather than in spite of his absence. E101/54/8; C219/15/4.

It may be that in the following year Pennington was with his father in the force commanded by the earl of Northumberland’s son, Henry Percy, Lord Poynings, which met defeat at the hands of the Scots on the river Sark on 23 Oct. 1448; and it would be consistent with all else that is known of him if he took part in the disastrous French campaign of 1449-50. R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 409-10. The next reference to him, however, relates to a different sphere: on 27 Aug. 1450 he was named as steward of Wexford by the earl of Shrewsbury, as steward of Ireland, an appointment that suggests he was seen as a career soldier. Rot. Pat. et Claus. Hib. ed. Tresham, i (1), 265. Pennington had returned once more to England by early in the following year. On 5 Apr. 1451, described as resident at Appleby in Westmorland, he offered mainprise for John Baker, one of the King’s serjeants-at-arms, in a grant of the lordship of Bowcombe on the Isle of Wight. Later in the same year, on 26 June, as ‘of Muncaster, esquire’, he joined John Newport I*, former steward of the Isle of Wight, in entering a bond of 600 marks to John Titchbourne. His willingness to do so probably expressed a personal friendship: both men had seen military service in France under the duke of York. Soon after, in Trinity term 1451, a writ of outlawry was issued against him and his father at the suit of the Neville earl and countess of Salisbury for a debt of 20 marks each. CFR, xviii. 190; CCR, 1447-54, p. 272; CP40/762, rot. 230. At this point, however, our MP disappears suddenly from the records. In the summer of 1452 his young son and heir, John, was contracted in marriage to Isabel, daughter of John Broughton* and widow of Hugh Salkeld of Little Salkeld, but it is not clear from the deed of settlement whether our MP was then alive or dead. Pennington-Ramsden mss, D/Pen 32/18, 47/21a. Death is the obvious explanation for this sudden disappearance, although a chance later reference implies that he might have lived into the late 1460s. On 1 Jan. 1467 one ‘John Pennington, esquire’ witnessed a minor grant to ‘John Pennington, junior, son of John Pennington, esquire’; so either our MP was still alive or the grant was made to his son’s son as a minor. Ibid. D/Pen 29/30. If our MP was, indeed, still alive, one can only assume that some personal incapacity ended his career in the early 1450s. All that is certain is that he did not live to succeed his father in 1470.